Let’s talk about the fundamental interconnectedness of all things…

Main menu

Post navigation

When groups of people gather together to undertake a project, decisions have to be made that affect the group. There are a number of ways that these decisions can be made, some of them are better than others.

In my experience as a software engineer, I have found that the decision making process is usually poor. I think the same has to be said for the world at large.

Given the inefficiencies, stress, and sometimes life threatening consequences that arise out of our poor group decision making one would think we study the topic in our basic education. Sadly I’ve never met a person who has had such a course.

This is my attempt to draw some deliberate attention to how teams are making decisions. To identify some good and bad strategies for decision making and touch on the pros and cons of each of them, considering the cost in time and effort, the psychological impact on the team’s health, happiness, and productivity (which are strongly correlated), and the quality of the decision achieved.

Useful decision making strategies.

These are the decision making strategies that I think can be useful and productive for groups of people. All of these methods work well on a small scale – perhaps a group of 2 to a couple hundred people.

expertise based authority

One of the group (or perhaps a subgroup) has expertise in a particular topic, so the group agrees to defer to the obvious expert.

consensus

The group debates a decision until concurrences is reached – everyone agrees the decision is the best one on which consensus can be reached.

democracy

The group votes on the decision. There are a wide range of possibilities for democratic decisions, but the most common is simple majority.

stalemate strategies

Consensus can fail to be achieved. Democracy can be foiled by even numbers. You need strategies for these cases, like coin tossing, taking turns, or resorting to an outside authority.

Each of these strategies deserves deep consideration. Here I will simply attempt to give an overview of how these strategies compare and interact. Perhaps the most important thing to consider is that each strategy has value and deserves to be practiced. Striving for consensus and democracy should occur frequently enough that they are familiar and comfortable tools. This usually means applying them to less critical decisions on a regular basis, so that the process is smooth when a critical discussion must be had.

Regarding decision by authority: In the event that an individual or sub-group has particular expertise on a topic, it often makes sense to delegate decisions on that topic to the experts. They will often be able to determine a clearly better outcome with little discussion. As soon as decisions have to made about trade-offs that affect other parties however, those parties should be involved in the decision. When authority is overstepped it breeds both resentment and poor decisions, so groups should use this strategy with care.

A team typically has a large number of decisions to make where the entire team has a certain amount of expertise. As far as I can tell, these decisions should be made using consensus when possible, democracy when necessary, and other approaches only in corner cases.

Consensus is by far the best outcome. When a group reaches consensus, everyone can be happy about the outcome or at least accepts the necessity of that outcome and feels like their voice mattered. I’m convinced that decision by consensus, when reachable, produces by far the best outcomes.

Unfortunately there are never guarantees that consensus can be reached. It may be impossible to reach consensus at all, or be too time consuming and costly to be reached. When consensus fails, a good fallback is to rely on a democratic choice.

When making a democratic choice, the usual, and usually best approch is poll for a simple majority. When resentment might play a role, consider anonymous voting. There are many variants on the democratic decision making process and it is worthwile to survey some of these variants to see if improvements can be found for your process.

Democracy is riskier than consensus, and riskier than decision by authority, when the authority has a legitimate claim to expertise. A brief sampling of history provides a wealth of examples of people overstepping authority though, so beware! Democracy can also breed resentment when teams are formed, so this has to be actively monitored and combated. In my experience this tends to be more of a problem at large scale, and less of an issue within a small team, but if your experiences have been different I would love to hear from you.

Putting this together, an obvious algorithm is reached:

Is there a clear and acknowledged expert on the topic? Then let the expert decide. Remember that experts can and should be challenged, and when the decision being made affects other parties they should be consulted and ideally part of the decision making process.

In the absence of authority, go for consensus. Often decisions are pretty obvious and saying something like “It seems to me like X is a good choice, does someone object?” will stream right though since most people want to get out of the meeting room. When objections occur, let everyone have their say. You need a clear strategy to follow regarding how long you will strive for consensus, and your fallback will be when consensus fails.

Democracy. This should be the default fallback. Some people will be unhappy, but done right people will feel that the decision was fair, keeping morale high. In the absence of consensus or legitimate authority, this will produce the best outcome and is not costly.

There are rare cases where a person in a position of administrative authority, like a manager or team leader, might find it best to exercise administrative authority. This can be useful in extreme cases where the leader feels it is important to team morale, or has knowledge they can’t share that enables them to make a more informed choice. This should only occur rarely.

Harmful decision making strategies

There are not doubt an infinite number of identifiable patterns of harmful group decision making. Some like authoritarianism, monarchy, cult of personality, and fear mongering are well understood but nonetheless continue to play a large role in both the private and public sector. We can only try to be aware of these patterns and seek to avoid them when we have the opportunity. Some other common anti-patterns I’ve recognized which are perhaps less discussed are:

administrative authority

An individual is granted an administrative function which imparts them with the authority to override their teammates and make decisions by fiat. This can be very time efficient, but has many vectors by which it produces unsatisfactory outcomes. It should be an unwelcome last resort, but is sadly often the default.

avoidance of conflict

Often organizations seek to find ways to avoid having discussions and conflicts among their team members. When a decision is made it is made in the background without consulting others for the fear of difficult confrontations. This typically leads to the most difficult and stubborn team members leading by default.

Last words

As I write this, these things seem self evident to me, but in my experience the logical steps this analysis would indicate are rarely practiced. My suggestion is we citizens and employees study these approaches, and seek to correct and improve whatever decision making processes we can.

One simple exercise is to reach for democracy or consensus whenever you have been given administrative authority of something. Do this often enough and you may inspire others to do the same. As consensus building and democratic choice are practiced more in your organization they should become more accepted. The positive outcomes will help to spread the methods. Pitfalls that have to navigated include problematic colleagues, and excessive time suck. Have a good idea how much time to spend debating before calling for a vote.

In my experience following this advice typically leads to happier and more productive teams. As with anything worthwhile, there are challenges and intricacies to consider, but I hope you will agree that good group decision making is worth investing some attention and practice in.

Before I start, let me say I have a lot of respect for the modern Catholic church, and the work that pope Francis is doing. If we look at the Roman Catholic church historically though, I think everyone would have to agree the the churches behavior diverged radically from Jesus’ teachings, and I’m fascinated about how that happened.

So, I was a little high the other day, and readying Robert Wright’s absolutely wonderful book “Why Buddhism Is True”, which is enlightening, witty and clever. Everyone, really everyone should read it. Go, buy it and read it now. It will be a much better use of your time than reading this post.

Wecome back! Wasn’t that a good read? As someone who identifies strongly with Buddhism, but doesn’t have much knowledge or cultural investment in Buddhism, I was interested to learn about the existence of various schools of Buddhism. This led me to think how this wasn’t much different than the existence of various sects of both Judaism and Christianity. I’m sure the same applies to Islam, but being even more ignorant of Islam than I am about Buddhism, I can’t really pontificate on that.

From there my default mode network took me back to a conversation I once had with a young Swiss person who had made some disparaging remarks about Christianity and compared it negatively against Buddhism, saying something about how Buddhism didn’t lead to mass killings out of religious intolerance, or brainwashing people to follow governments, or some such thing. Christianity’s violent and intolerant history is certainly troubling, and I sympathized with him on the topic, but I had to point out the (then) recent transgressions committed in the name of Budhism in Myanmar, and previously in Thailand.

Now as I learn the teachings of the Buddha, I’m quite shocked that such things could have occurred in the name of the Buddha, but then I thought about poor Jesus. How the heck could anyone take the teachings of Jesus and decide yeah, Jesus wants me to go on a crusade, or heck, Jesus wants me to blow up an abortion clinic. How did a commie hippie, who treated a prostitute as an equal wind up being the basis of a religion that treated women and sex in the way that Catholicism has.

No doubt many Muslims feel the same way about violent Islamic religious sects.

That would be a fascinating book: the corruption of ideals — how various institutions corrupted the religious ideals on which their existence was founded. Anyone know of good work on the subject?

I don’t keep accurate statistics about how much television I watch during the week. I suppose the figure would shock me, but I like to think it averages about 5 hours a week in the last couple of years. It’s certainly significantly lower than the American average of 35 hours per week. I found that figure completely shocking.

When I discuss television with friends and colleagues, I often feel the need to mention my feeling that commodity-media occupies too large territory in our mind space. I generally refer to television, since television is most obvious culprit. The television tends to be the most prominent feature of most peoples living rooms. I haven’t been to the states in a while, but when I lived there it wasn’t unusual to find houses with televisions in the bedrooms, kitchens and bathrooms. I think my sister has a television in her bedroom. I fear things have gotten worse in this regard since the advent of flatscreens, but perhaps the existence of tablets and smart phones has killed off that particular symptom.

Swiss tend not to have so many televisions, but tablets and smart phones are ubiquitous and typically one wall of the living room is dedicated to the television. We don’t have a television, so when I walk by my neighbors and see their ginormous media systems I’m reminded of Fahrenheit 451 (the book, I don’t know the show), or of an altar with the television taking the place of god-statue.

I often find myself thinking about all of the hours I’ve spent on youtube, watching people discuss minutia of Game of Thrones. I think back to my childhood, listening to people make complex analysis of sports teams based on an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of the sport, the teams and statistics of individual team members. Imagine that mental energy was being spent on more meaningful topics, like the harm we are doing to our planet, our decreasing chances of survival as a species, economic injustice, social inequality, famine, overpopulation, resource exhaustion, racial intolerance, teacher wages, the health of our local schools, the wellbeing of our children, what to cook for our next meal, the four noble truths of the Buddha…

It’s not hard to accumulate a list of things that would be better occupiers of our intellectual landscapes, our energy, our time, our lives. Even if you don’t agree with all the things that come to my mind, I’m sure you have some that come to yours, and no doubt there is some intersect somewhere between our lists.

Imagine if we had as many youtube channels dedicated to discussing those lists, and the content of those lists as we currently have discussing Game of Thrones? I’m not picking on Game of Thrones here, it’s just that it is my particular sin.

So this post is me taking a little time away from the television to talk about something a little more important than television — the fact that we watch too much television, we talk too much about television, we let the television (streaming media and movies are all television) distract us from interests and activities that would make our lives better. So let’s be aware of it and strive to do better.

I’ve been 10-15 kb (22-36 lbs) overweight for well over a decade. I’m vegetarian and eat quite a healthy diet, although I suffer from sugar addiction. I go months at a time where I rigidly control my calories, avoid sugar. I exercise a lot. In that time I ran a marathon, ran an olympic length triathalon (the XTerra in Switzerland), exercised regularly including strength training, yoga, and endurance work. With hard work I could get my weight down to about 88kg, but I always plateaued around there. Inevitably and injury, illness, stress, or a holiday season would come by, and the weight would creep back on, the trousers would get tight, and I’d have to buckle down again. I never let myself get much past 93kg, but I’m pretty sure my wife never knew me with less than 88.

This last summer I started experimenting with with fasting. I started out doing a couple of 22 hour fasts (dinner to dinner), then tried a 48 hour fast, a 4 day fast a few weeks later.

That got me down to around 87 kg, and I’ve maintained that with two or three 22 hour fasts most weeks.

For months after I hit 87 I felt pretty good about my weight. I was using a notch smaller on all my belts, my formerly tight trousers were looser and more comfortable, although I had to retire some of my looser stuff as it got too baggy. When I looked in the mirror I saw the difference to my 93 kg self and felt pretty good about it. When I noticed the weight creep up a little, I just did a 20 hour fast or two, and didn’t overeat too much in the non-fasting time.

The great thing about this approach for me was I could still enjoy food. I could pig out during an evening out or a really good meal without worrying about my weight, since I could just do a day-fast or two to compensate for it. By now going 22 hours without food takes virtuall no will power, and involves no discomfort. I’m saving money and hassle since I now seldom buy or pack a lunch for work – going from breakfast till dinner without eating is peanuts for me.

After carrying ~87kg for a couple of months, it’s now normal for me. When I look in the mirror I see the paunch and the flab, not the reduction. I still don’t fit in those size 34 jeans that have been sitting in my closet for 10 years, and I now that all I have to do is stop eating for a few days to level it down. Christmas is coming, and I’d like to impress my family with my newly slim figure.

So Saturday I told Bettina I’d skip dinner. Suday I told her I’d continue my fast. Monday I rode my bike through the snow with Scotty in the trailer to take him to swimming lessons and I was surprised how energetic and fit I felt. The last time I’d done a longer fast I’d felt a bit schlap, and found myself quickly out of breath. This time I didn’t bike noticeably slower than normal. So when Bettina came home I told her I would just keep on fasting until I got fed up.

I’m being a little less strict about the fast this time around – I’m putting a little almond milk in my tea. I’m taking a multivitamin and mineral supplement every day. Therefore I’m doing a lot more sports. Today I rode in to work – 22 km and 200m climbing, and I feel pretty good so far. Let’s see how I feel coming home. In fact I feel more energetic than normal.

So now I feel comfortable making some observations about fasting:

It’s convenient and easy to integrate into my life. The short fasts make life easier – no food preparation, no lunch breaks, no sluggish feeling after work. The longer fasts mean missing family meal time, but with a little planning that can be compensated for. I take advantage of meal time to get chores done that have been lingering.

It feels healthy. When I mention the fasting to people I encounter a lot of people (most of them overweight) who think it must be unhealthy or dangerous. I reviewed what’s known on the subject and there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that it’s dangerous or unhealthy for well-nourished individual. What evidence is there does seem to indicat that it’s extremely healthy; not just because being overweight is unhealthy, but because going into a fasting state for lengthier periods of time has serious health benefits like reduced risk of cancer, and reduced risk of alzheimers and dementia. Wow. It also passes the ‘listen to your body test’. While it sometimes is uncomfortable – especially at the beginning of the fast, or when you aren’t used to it – when you later eat you feel great. In my case my skin has improved significantly. I’m now at the point when I feel sluggish or down, my instinct is to try having a fast, as it often seems to help.

It’s a form of physical training. Fasting is like doing sports, if you train at it, you get better at it. If you’re like me and not used to going more than 8 hours (at night, sleeping) without eating, it will probably seem really uncomfortable. With repetition it gets easier. My first 24 hour fasts were more difficult than my current fast, which is on its fourth day now.

It’s a form of mental training. When you resist your urges to eat for a longer period of time you come to a better understanding of your bodies signals, and change your relationship with your appetitites. You practice controlling your appetite rather than letting your appetites control you, which is an incredibly useful skill in our overmarketed existances as consumers where we are constantly bombarded with messages telling us we need more and more – when in reality what we really need is less.

Well, that’s all I have to say for now. I dont’ really have a goal with my current fast. I’d like to get down to 82 kg at some point in the next 6 months, which would hypothetically be possible if I don’t eat until Christmas vacation, but I’m not going to force the issue. My current plan is to eat again when I get fed up with fasting. Let’s see how it goes.

GDB and GDBServer are now build witha c C++ compiler by default. Don’t know if that impacts end users much, but as a C++ developer I find it interesting.

You can now pass a negative repeat count in the ‘x’ command, to examine memory some count backwards from the current address.

Apparently there are improvements to the mechanisms provided to front ends.

G++ :

new option -fconstexpr-loop-limit=<n>, which sets the maximum number of iterations in a constexpr loop.

-fstrong-eval-order forces the evaluation of member acess, array subscripting, and shipt expressions in left-to-right order, and assigments as right-to-left, as adopted for C++17. Enabled by default when using -std=c++1z.

One doesn’t have to look far to find anti-Bernie bias in the media, generally in the form of ignoring the fact that he exists. Here’s one I noticed yesterday in the NYT, in an article talking about what a clown Trump is. At one point they mention “Polling shows that he would enter the general election trailing badly against Hillary Clinton”

That plays well into the establishment message that we have to settle for Clinton because Bernie Sanders would be unelectable, and we need Clinton to make sure that (pick a Republican) doesn’t win. Never mind that polls show that people prefer Bernie Sanders over Trump by a much wider margin than they prefer Clinton. Clinton currently leads by 11.2 points, while Sanders leads Trumb by 17.4 point. In other words the preference of Sanders over Trump exceeds peoples preference of Clinton over Trump by more than 60%.

fish

Configure powerline to display git information

If all you want to do is get the git branch displayed on your powerline, that’s pretty easy, see for example this excellent article. But after I discovered powerline-gitstatus, I just had to have it.

Install the powerline-gitstatus segment:

pip install powerline-gitstatus

Setup a configuration

I’ve put my powerline configuration up on github, so if you like, you can start with my configuration, and play with it from there simply by clone my powerline-configuration repository into your local .config directory. I.e.:

Aah, good news. There’s a plugin that lets me post to my wordpress blog using Emacs org mode. The github repository is here. The mainpage documentation creates an unecessarily complicated picture of what has to be done to get this puppy running. On emacs 24.5.1 all I had to do was:

And hey presto, I’m up and running. I can write my posts in a first class editing evironment, using a first class markup language, and just export it with a keystroke (there are default keybindings, but I’m not using them yet). More’s possible, but for the moment I’m satisfied with that. For example, there are instructions on the github page explaining how to create a post template, and how customize your authentication, but so far I haven’t felt the need.